Alma Celebrates Modern Honduras Cuisine in New Orleans by Chef Melissa Araujo . Operated by Araujo Restaurant Group LLC

chef melissa Araujo was featur on chopped foodnetwork

We Got the Cover of Gambit

For Melissa Araujo, food always has held a nostalgic and transportive power — the aroma of beef and onions sizzling slowly on the stove usually does the trick. One moment, she'll be sitting in a brightly lit Kenner restaurant, and an instant after the smell hits her she's right back at her childhood home in La Ceiba, Honduras, watching her mother slicing onions and pounding steaks for her favorite dish, bistec encebollado.

For Araujo, who was born in Honduras but grew up in New Orleans, the savory beef dish smothered with caramelized onions is more than just a memory — it's a calling. The chef and owner of Saveur Catering, a farm-to-table catering company, has worked at restaurants all over the city, but it's at her Honduran-themed pop-up, Alma, where Araujo educates diners about the dishes of her homeland.

At Alma, Araujo hosts events that include pop-ups and multi-course chef's dinners where she prepares traditional Honduran dishes with the finesse of a tenured chef. That might include her version of bistec encebollado, fresh ceviches and a tres leches cake.

"There's a misunderstanding of what Honduran cuisine is, and it's not that simple," Araujo says. "To really get Honduran cuisine is to understand the way we were colonized, from small Mayan tribes, to the Spanish, to the African slaves who populated the coast, and even the English who colonized (neighboring) Belize."

The result is a diverse, multifaceted cuisine that's as varied as the Central American country itself, from the corn — and masa-heavy dishes of the mountainous highlands to seafood and the coconut-rich soups of the north coast and Bay Islands.

New Orleans is home to an increasing number of Honduran restaurants, the result of a boom in the city's Central American population over the past decade. Since 2000, the percentage of Hispanics in the city increased from 3.1 percent to 5.6 percent. Nowhere was that as evident as in Jefferson Parish, where Hispanics now represent 14.2 percent of the total population, according to The Data Center, a New Orleans-based data analysis group. At 34 percent of that total, Hondurans are the most populous Hispanic group in the metro area, according to the Data Center.

Though the most recent wave of Hondurans immigrated to the city in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the federal levee failures, New Orleans traditionally has been an attractive hub for immigrants from that country.

Mayra Pineda, president and CEO of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Louisiana and a native Honduran, says the current population is the result of at least three generations of Hondurans, beginning with workers who arrived in the late 1800s and early 1900s with companies like Standard Fruit & Steamship Co. and United Fruit Company, both of which had headquarters in New Orleans.

"[The first wave of Hondurans] started establishing ties here and having kids. That's the second generation," Pineda says, adding that Hondurans came to New Orleans for a variety of reasons in the following years. The later wave was more "need-based," she says, with immigrants arriving to pursue the American dream and a better job, or fleeing a country that throughout the years has seen an increasingly volatile political atmosphere rife with corruption and violence.

Repairing damages from Hurricane Katrina created a new demand for workers, and as part of the rebuilding effort, the city saw another large group of immigrants from Central and South America move to the city to take construction jobs in the years following the storm. Restaurants catering to those workers were quick to follow.

Marlen Nunez remembers the days after the storm, when construction workers would line up at dawn outside her tiny Honduran restaurant Beraca, which is tucked away on Arnoult Road in Metairie.

"Sometimes there would be fights outside, people trying to get in before the others," Nunez recalls. "Back then, we had 20 people working at the restaurant and we were so busy we could still hardly keep up."

Now, more than a decade later, Nunez's restaurant still serves as a hub for Hondurans seeking familiar and comforting cuisine. A small window opens into the kitchen, where women stretch dough for tortillas. In the dining room, families gather at tables over giant plates of pescado frito, a fried whole fish (often tilapia or redfish) served with rice and refried beans, salad, sweet plantains and a shower of pickled jalapenos, carrots and onions.

It's one of several places Araujo frequents when she's feeling homesick. Her other go-to, La Cocinita, sits on a nondescript stretch of Veterans Memorial Boulevard in Kenner, sandwiched between an electronics store and a tattoo parlor in a strip mall.

Like the ubiquitous pickled vegetable mix — a bright, tangy mix made with an apple cider vinegar brine — most dishes at many of the Honduran mainstays are accompanied by an addictively creamy, light pink sauce (which Araujo playfully calls "crack sauce"). Similar to Thousand Island dressing, but thinner, it's made with ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise and herbs and complements just about everything.

St. Charles Magazine

On July 9, from 6-9 p.m., chef Melissa Araujo of Alma will serve a five course dinner of her native Honduran cuisine at the Southern Food & Beverage Museum. The evening will begin with cocktails from 6-7 p.m., and each course will be paired with wine. Born in La Ceiba, Atlatidad, a small beach town on the Atlantic coast of Honduras, Araujo pays tribute to her grandmother’s cooking through her life’s work.

“I had no choice but to fall in love with food. I grew up with a family, and food was the center of everything. My mother Angeolina Araujo is Sicilian-Italian, and my father, Oscar Araujo, is Honduras-Maya with Portuguese. I was a locavore by birthright, and my early immersion in fresh, local, seasonal ingredients has informed and influenced my culinary philosophy. I love to re-create the story people share with me with the food I cook.”

The cost is $75 per person. Twenty percent of all proceeds are being put aside to establish a fund for the education and care of impoverished children in Honduras. Tickets may be purchased atAlmaNola.squarespace.com.

Press

Nola by Mouth Intreview

Pop-up Alma shares recipe for corn waffle BLTs

A couple of weeks ago, I met the farm-to-table chef Melissa Araujo, who was working with a group of volunteer chefs to feed flood victims in the Baton Rouge area. My mouth literally started watering when Araujo described the corn waffle BLTs and other meals she's planning for Alma, her pop-up that feature her own Honduran cuisine infused with Cajun/Creole twists that she absorbed working in some of New Orleans' best restaurants.

She shared the waffle recipe, below. And this week I had a chance to taste her shrimp and grits made with Creole barbecue sauce (made by cooking down 2 cups Crystal hot sauce with 4 cups Worcestershire sauce with aromatics and herbs), fig and burrata appetizers and, most spectacularly, deviled eggs made with smoked trout.

Alma is moving on Saturday, Sept. 3, to a regular gig at the French Truck Café location, 4536 Dryades St., from 5 to 9 p.m.

St. Charles Magazine

On July 9, from 6-9 p.m., chef Melissa Araujo of Alma will serve a five course dinner of her native Honduran cuisine at the Southern Food & Beverage Museum. The evening will begin with cocktails from 6-7 p.m., and each course will be paired with wine. Born in La Ceiba, Atlatidad, a small beach town on the Atlantic coast of Honduras, Araujo pays tribute to her grandmother’s cooking through her life’s work.

“I had no choice but to fall in love with food. I grew up with a family, and food was the center of everything. My mother Angeolina Araujo is Sicilian-Italian, and my father, Oscar Araujo, is Honduras-Maya with Portuguese. I was a locavore by birthright, and my early immersion in fresh, local, seasonal ingredients has informed and influenced my culinary philosophy. I love to re-create the story people share with me with the food I cook.”

The cost is $75 per person. Twenty percent of all proceeds are being put aside to establish a fund for the education and care of impoverished children in Honduras. Tickets may be purchased atAlmaNola.squarespace.com.

3-Course Interview: Melissa Araujo on Honduran cuisine in New Orleans

The owner of Saveur Catering runs the Honduran pop-up Alma

Chef Melissa Araujo has cooked all over the world, including at New Orleans restaurants Mondo, Restaurant R'evolution and Doris Metropolitan. Araujo is now the owner and executive chef of the boutique catering company Saveur Catering (www.saveurcatering.com). Last year, she launched the pop-up Alma (www.almanola.com), featuring the food of her native Honduras. Her next event is a five-course meal with wine pairings on July 9 at the Southern Food & Beverage Museum. Araujo spoke with Gambit about Honduran cuisine and why it's hard to find in New Orleans.

Where did the idea for Alma come from?

Araujo: I've been cooking since I was 18 and I haven't looked back. I worked in New Orleans since 2011 and I worked in Mexico for fours years, and 10 years in Italy.

I started my (catering) company in 2013 and that gave me the opportunity to do some work on the side, and like every chef in the city, I hustled. I kept my fine-dining career going until the catering business could pay the bills by itself, and that took about two years. I had a lot of friends that kept on asking me when I was going to cook Honduran cuisine. I would tell them, "That's labor intensive," but they kept pushing me. My ex-girlfriend was the one who pushed me to explore more of my heritage.

Food for me is memory. I was spoiled growing up. My grandmother was an amazing cook and my mother was also an amazing cook. Every time I would go eat at a Honduran restaurant in the city, I'd end up sending the food back. (Most Honduran restaurants) don't specialize in one cuisine; they're all mixed together — Honduran, Mexican and so on. They're not focused on the quality ... and it's not a good representation of the cuisine.

(In Honduras) I used to go with my mother and my grandmother to the fishermen's market and we could get anything and it was cheap. I didn't have the memories growing up of going to a supermarket; it was all local and fresh. Everything came directly from the local fisherman, the local farmer.

One of the things I also wanted to do was to cook the way I was taught from my mother and my grandmother. I thought, "This is very personal to me. I want to do it right."

Why is Honduran food underrepresented in New Orleans?

A: Louisiana is very similar to Honduras — Honduras was also conquered by the Spanish. Honduran cuisine is a lot like Creole (cuisine); it's a mixture between Spanish and the native tribes of Honduras, and there's an abundance of seafood. It depends on where you go, but if you go to the coast, by La Ceiba, where my father is from, you'll get amazing seafood.

The (Honduran) population has mixed in well here. ... But Hondurans are very private and they keep their culture confined to their house. If you really want Honduran food you have to go to (someone's) house. It has not made as big of an impact as some of the other cultures have on New Orleans cuisine.

The biggest thing I've found in New Orleans is that (diners) don't think Honduran cuisine can be fine dining. Of course it can; it's all about the cook's perspective.

How do you balance running a catering company and a pop-up?

A: It is a lot of work. I'm literally sleeping about three or four hours a day. It's a lifestyle, but you get used to it. When you become a cook, you come to this profession because you have a lot of passion for it and because you're a workaholic. It's not because of the money. You sacrifice a lot of things. You have to be well-organized. I organize as much as I can in advance. I'm not perfect, but I try to look for people who are as passionate and good at what they do. I try to find people who share the same vision that I do, and that helps.

Today I am interviewing her regarding her experiences in the business & any other interesting tidbits that come up along the way. Lets get to it.

How long have you been cooking?I've been cooking for about 20 years. I started when I was 18 to get extra money & after that it was natural for me to keep going.

Who or what inspired you to become a chef?I guess life in itself. I grew up with very strong women. My grandmother was native Indian/Mayan and she owned a lot of land in Honduras. She worked that land - both farming & raising animals. She was very adamant about us knowing our heritage & where we came from.

My mother was also a very passionate woman with a strong Sicilian background.

Between the two - everything was cooked daily at home. Nothing was frozen. It was drilled into me to cook locally sourced goods since I was a kid. I didn't have a choice. I went to school to become a lawyer but my passion was cooking & always has been. It's natural in my family.

Yeah, I feel that us restaurant people try to stray, but we always navigate back to the industry. It's what we enjoy doing versus a way to make money.Yes, I say we are gluttons for punishment because we are! You know, it's a tough industry. We get our asses kicked by all the "mise en place" (*Explained below.) Then, we get out asses kicked by cooking for people & then you still have to clean everything up. We can't just pick up our knives & go home - we have to clean all the equipment!

Right, there's nothing easy about it. If you weren't a chef, what would you be doing right now? What did you want to be when you grew up?Actually, I had the dream of being an architect! I was always drawing houses & building things. I was very passionate about both that & art. Unfortunately, my father thought that was a waste of time. He basically beat that out of me. His family had always been lawyers & doctors. So, I went to school to become a lawyer but I did not like it - I never took the bar & I kept cooking. So, here we are.

What was the first restaurant you worked in? What were you doing?When I was 16 I started working at Centro Americana here in New Orleans, which is still a working restaurant over in Metairie. My best friend's sister owned it at the time with her ex husband. He still owns it to this day. I was a waiter.

(**To which I said "Wow, front of the house." Explained below.)

Yeah, I did not like it. I am not good with people. I do not know how to sell products to people. I do not have the patience for the substitutions, the "please take this out & put this in." If you're coming to eat at a restaurant, eat the food the chef is cooking. Don't make up your own food. If you want no butter, do that at your own house.

Do you eat well when you're not at work?HELL NO! We are the worst people ever when it comes to eating. People like to think we eat this amazing food but we don't!

What do you typically eat?I eat... Usually whatever I have left over in my refrigerator. That's basically it. This weekend I cooked Sopa de Marriscos, which is a seafood soup from Honduras & I did a key lime lemon meringue pie. That is only because I was stuck at home from with rain & flooding (***more information below.) My girlfriend wanted me to make her favorite (Honduran) food. So, we've been eating that for the last two days. (Seen below)

What is the favorite dish you've ever made? What sticks out in your mind as the thing you were most proud to put out?I think every dish I put out I'm very proud on. I was told once you're only as good as your last dish. I try to put a little bit of me into everything I do. I do surprise myself sometimes though. I hadn't made the soup I made on Saturday in over ten years but I had all the ingredients, I remembered how to do it the right way & it came out amazing.

Nice. What is favorite/least favorite ingredient to work with?So far I haven't encountered anything. When a chef doesn't know an ingredient specifically, in this profession, you have to keep educating yourself. There's always someone younger - someone more hungry than you - & it's a profession where the day you stop learning is the day you stop being a chef.

I personally love buying anything I can find. Anything weird that I can find. Especially the little gems - The minority stores. The Hong Kong Market. The Arabic Stores. I like to cook everything.

Is the increased interest in celebrity chefs good or bad for the industry?I think it's good. It's a double edged sword. It's good for your business. People see you on TV, automatically, it doesn't matter - they want to get food from you. Which is great for your business. They see you do well on TV so they assume you have the talent. So, you get that recognition. It's a double edged sword because a not-so-good chef could get the opportunity to go on TV to make a dish. Then they get a ton of work, but then they can't actually deliver. That's the bad part.

Also, I think when you make the decision to be a celebrity chef you basically have to be willing to sell your soul. You have no privacy after that. Of course, that's one of the only ways (in this profession) to make a beautiful income. You know, you become rich from it. It's good & bad. As a 'regular joe' nobody knows me, no one knows who I am. I have to hustle harder, but I have my privacy.

What are the most essential items you have in you kitchen? What can you not work without?Kosher salt, cumin, garlic, shallots, honey, herb. Good quality ingredients. Fresh. I buy a lot of local honey from Farmer's Market throughout Louisiana.

A little more casual now. Do you have any pet peeves in the kitchen?I hate a messy cook. I hate a person that has a huge mess. I hate it.

What do you do to unwind after work?Well, in my 20's is was drinking.(To which I asked laughed & asked "What was your favorite drink?")Rum & coke. If I really wanted to get hammered it was long island iced tea. It would just take a couple of them. Now that I'm in my 30's it's going home. Spending time with my dogs & my girlfriend.

Do you have most memorable kitchen disaster?Umm.. I have several actually. One time when I was a line cook at Revolution when I thought we only had 100 people on the books****. My executive sous chef then tells me there's 400 an hour & a half before service starts. I just start scrambling & cooking extra shit. She (the sous) was like "Well, I didn't think you would pull it off, but you did." So it was almost a disaster, a near disaster, but I'm the type of chef that I will not go down. I will fight to the tooth. There's no quitting. I might be down but I'm fighting as hard as possible to come out on top.

Have you ever pulled a prank on a co-worker? Or had one pulled on you?I had one pulled on me for my birthday. Basically, I was working with a friend after coming back from Italy. I was the saucier at Mr. Ed's & the executive chef's was a friend on mine - we went to high school together. My birthday came up, I had to work AND I ended up with a cream pie in my face(To which I asked "Before or after service?")Before service actually, so I sticky all night.

If you were to die tomorrow, what would your last meal be?Pescado Frito - Basically, a Honduran dish of red snapper fried in coconut oil. It's served with fried sweet plantains, a pickled salad, rice, beans... It's heaven.

Is there anything exciting happening with your business?It's slow but the busy season will be starting in the middle of September. Alma has something coming up on Sept 16th. We've going to be in the Southern Museum of Food & Beverage. September 16th is the Honduran Independence Day. So, we will be doing a demo on cooking seafood stew. We are also involve with the Garifuna Community Foundation, which is the descendants of the African slaves that were brought to Honduras from the Caribbean. They will dressed from head to toe in costume & will explain the immigration, how it happened, to Honduras. Chef Amy Sims & I will be teaming up & roasting a whole hog (To which I said "Nice, always good. Always a crowd pleaser.") Yeah, it's always a crowd pleaser. This time we are going to be doing it a little different. We are going to do it Honduran style. So, my banana tree is going to be chopped up. I'm going to use banana leaves, pineapple, herbs, kosher salt, cumin. We're going to do it the old fashioned way, Honduran style.